| Jack McCloskey built a championship team that was both loved and loathed. It was years before his daughter began to appreciate who he was.  Photograph courtesy Special Collections & Archives, Wake Forest University It was an infamous moment in the history of professional basketball: in 1991, seconds away from being ousted from the playoffs by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, most of the Detroit Pistons trudged off the court before the final buzzer sounded, refusing to wait around for defeat. As the Pistons’ star guard Isiah Thomas reached the exit tunnel, he shared an embrace with the team’s general manager, Jack McCloskey, who was weeping. The scene was poignant for Pistons fans, revealing the family bond the team had formed, but it would have a different meaning for McCloskey’s own daughter. “It wasn’t just that this was my father at his very best: loyal, vulnerable, utterly invested,” the writer Molly McCloskey explains, in a moving and wise Personal History from this week’s issue. “It was because it made clear that there were two things I needed to forgive him for: not having been there for me, and having been there for others.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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